I decided to share information on Chapter 8 (Learning Environment)because this is an area of teaching that many times is not regarded as important or as necessary in the teaching process. Other times, teachers feel that they do not have the time to give so much thought to what goes on the walls. Other times, teachers simply do not know how much impact on learning your environment has. Yet other times, some teachers feel that the more things you have on your wall the more your students will get distracted.
My goal regarding this topic is to use this information to help me improve my teaching and to help students learn more effectively thru the use of the learning environment.
There are many great points in this chapter. Some of these ideas I have used in my classroom. Other ideas I need to incorporate because they will improve the performance and attitude of my students in positive ways.
I found many points of interest. One of such points is the impact of the classroom environment on students'behaviors and learning. A carefully planned environment can accomplish about 25% of your teaching. Simple classroom modifications can do that.
Another point of interest is that our brain needs stimulus, more change, and more movement in the classroom. The standard, rigid sit-still format is unproductive. Change your bulletin boards, seating arrangements, furniture, colors, etc. throught the school year.
The front of the room is best kept clean and simple. The sides of the room should have most of the instructional visual stimuli.
The position of the visuals can impact the student in varied ways. If you want to inspire good feelings, place things below students' eye level. When the eyes look down and to the right you are accesing the kinesthetic mode. When you put things at eye level, students will talk about a specific item on the wall. Yet, if you want students to just observe the information, put things above eye level which stimulates the visual mode. This is good when you want your students to recall information and to review it.
Room temperature and lighting also affect the way students learn. If possible, classrooms should be kept between 68 and 72 degrees F to feel comfortable for most students. Natural and indirect lighting is better than fluorescent; the front of the room should be well-lit.
Another point mentions the sound of learning. Since about 40% of your students are auditory learners, music can bring forth desirable mood changes.
One way to use music in your classroom is to play it at the beginning and closing, and to mark transitions or breaks. Depending on your students state, you can play lively or slower music.
The last AHA point has to do with greeting students at the door when they first come in the clasroom. It elicits a positive personal impression.
There where other interesting points in addition to the ones I mentioned here. This is a great chapter to read because of the importance of the learning environment in students'learning.
I chose this chapter to read because there are no two students alike. There is diversity in almost every school, but of course, some more than others. I found this chapter very interesting and informative to read. There were some things that I had already known, but much of the information was new to me.
One of the topics that I knew about already was about the difference between boys and girls when it comes to learning. I knew that girls read at an earlier age than boys. My son and daughter were both August babies. My husband and I sent our daughter to kindergarten right after her 5th birthday. We waited that extra year for our son. We are really glad that we did because they both did fine. We didn’t think our son was ready at 5 years old and that extra year really helped him out.
One of the AHA’s that I read about was the number of children on stimulant medication for ADD and ADHD. I heard there were a lot, but I did not realize that over one in every thirty is.
The chapter talked about diversity and differences among children. Some of the others that were mentioned were dyslexia, gifted and talented, and multi-culture diversity.
As I stated earlier, I found this chapter to be very informative and I will use the information to help me become a better teacher by trying to understand each individual student within my classroom.
I chose this chapter because I believe it is an important skill to work on for adults and students. Jensen did an excellent job breaking down listening styles, ways to create a listening environment, non-verbal cues, and clarifying what is being said.
Attentive listening is something we practice all the time in my classroom. I always do many tribes activities with my students and listening without interrupting is something they all struggle with. There are excellent tips in this chapter such as Precision Listening and Listening With Empathy. In this chapter he also points out that before effective communication can take place you need to show students that they can trust you and feel safe. I had a unique situation with a student this past school year. She had a kidney disease and was set to have a kidney transplant at the end of June. You could really read in her body language and voice that she was very anxious about the surgery, and she would generally talk to me about it and not the other students. As the school year was ending her classmates noticed her anxiety, and became great empathetic listeners. She began to talk quite openly about her surgery. The other students were great and I know they were a comfort to her. (Her surgery went great and she is now recovering at home.)
The Aha's for me were the empathetic and precision listening tips. Positive listening skills are important and something we always need to work on. I will also refer back to the examples of effective questioning to get clarification.
I decided to read about learning environment, as well. I feel that this is a weakness for me in my school because I have 3 different classrooms that I share with other teachers. One of the classrooms is quite messy and unorganized due to the other teacher and I can see that it affects my students. I learned from the chapter that a poorly designed environment distracts from the learning process. I also learned that I can do simple things such as adding more color to the room, playing soft music, posting affirmations, allowing students to choose seating, and having a communication board. My goal is to incorporate these things in all of my classrooms and I am going to speak with the one teacher and offer my help to keep the room looking tidy and maybe he will make an effort since it will truly benefit students.
I forgot to mention something and I can't figure out how to repost or add to my previous post, so I will add it in a new post. An aha to me in the chapter was the fact that forced-frozen student seating can impair learning and that allowing students to choose fresh, unconditional seats each time will help to leave old, fixed, and limiting patterns. I have always used a seating chart and could not imagine not having one! However, I am going to try it and hope that it works. I do see the point in giving choices in order to make the environment more welcoming and open.
One of the chapters that caught my interest was Chapter 12 on "Learning Activities and Energizers."
Physical activity boosts the mental activity. If we use learning that which involves more physical activity it is generally is more effective learning.
Engaging one's emotions can help activate the mid-brain area. Role-playing and learning games help all us to learn with our muscles as well as our body. Since our body is in the survival mode it helps us to relieve some stress by doing multi-sensory stimulation.
The AHA that I reflected on was that many discipline problems are a result of board, under-stimulated, and/or physically active students who need a change. It usually happens when there are numerous problems I tend to forget at that moment to get the kids engaged in an energizer or another activity.
My goal is to add more of the energizers into my classroom this school year. I picked up a magic coloring book and a glow thumb that I am eager to try with my students to encourage them.
This chapter is filled with various energizers to help boost or "wake up" the mind and body. There are many activities listed to use at various grade levels, and can be adapted as well to suite your students. Rock-paper- scissors game can easily be turned into a game of elephant (pretend by having a trunk), moose (Hands up by ears for antlers), or sleeping rabbit (pretend to be sleeping). Oh the fun you can have, and still energize the students! Check out the pages 171-180 for lot of activities to use in your classroom.
One of the chapters I chose was Mental Models of Success. I Teach Tech Ed and coach wrestling. I also wrestled in college on a scholorship. The most valuable part of wrestling at the college level was learning how to build mental toughness. The demands of completing coursework and competing at that level were very rigorous. So many of the concepts in this chapter brought me back to the lessons I learned as a competitor. I have since learned how to use the mental lessons I learned then to succeed in life. This is what I try to pass on to my students. What can you do now to give yourself the best chance to succeed in life. Even now when I coach high school athletes I am always mindful to use sports as a medium to convey life lesons. Too often it is the other way around. The sport becomes more important than life. Integraty, fair play, and hard work sometimes give way to cheating, braking rules, and lying in an attempt to win. The win is nice but it is not the ultimate goal. The ulitimate goal is to develop and hone skills that give you the best chance to succeed and achieve your goals. The win may simply be a way to measure but it is not the end resullt. It takes tremondous mental development to resist the pressure to win at all costs and to adopt the mind set that it is more important to develop the skills for success. I often use sports to convey this message but it can beconveyed universally accorss diciplines. When your sports career is over no one is going to care how many wins you had, your boss does not care if you won a state title, he cares if you learned to effectively deal with adverity, did you learn how to effectivly correct mistakes, do you know how to lead a team? Those are the types of things that will help you succeed in life and they all require a foundation of stong mental dicipline. The kind that comes from utilizing the mental models of success.
Chapter 15 Multiple Intelligences…The reason I chose the chapter on MI is because I feel this area would be something I could implement this fall in my classroom. I use some beginnings of MI right now but I just need to further develop those to create a true MI classroom. Teachers need to make decisions regarding how they present their content. With our current CMP curriculum there is more chance for discovery than in the previous text. This also leads to more of MI classroom.
My goals for this fall would be to set up more learning centers based on the 8 MI and connect them to the content in my math classroom. I would have to start out small by setting up an area or learning center where students could work on a few extensions with the unit. These extensions could be some logical puzzles or a vocabulary word find. Students could work independently or within a small group.
Another goal would be to use journaling more often during the review for math lessons. I still need to come up with a method for reading the 120 journals every other day. Peer teaching and peer sharing are things that have been started but could be developed further. This could be during review lessons as well. I would also like to set up more of an after school math program to get students helping students. Finally incorporating movement during a math fact game would also make remembering the facts a little easier. I like the idea of clapping with the beat and saying or chanting the correct multiple of 9.
The interesting thing I found out with this chapter is that I use many MI ideas in my classroom already. These just need to be tweaked a bit to get the full amount. I find that Jensen’s book will be very helpful in tweaking my MI lessons. Ultimately with using these MI ideas I will get the most out of each student possible.
I decided to share information on Chapter 20, "Motivation and Rewards," because this is a topic that I feel strongly about and often see handled in very different ways. My goals regarding this topic were to find out more about the author's research-supported point of view as well as to learn how to encourage students to become internally motivated instead of relying on external rewards.
The following is an outline of highlights from the chapter:
-Rewards create uncertainty in the learner's mind. -Offering predictable or market-valued compensation or consquences (i.e. rewards) in fact bribe the learner. -Rewards hinder creativity and create a need for more and more (and greater) rewards. -In the long run, well-intended rewards do more damage than good for the "unmotivated under-achiever." -When rewards stop, the desired behavior stops and a return to baseline performance occurs. -Rewards *can* work when the request is for physical output, not intellectual. -Alternatives to bribing students include: 1.) to make school meaningful, 2.) to make school relevant, and 3.) to make school fun; intrinsic rewards to learning can and should be emphasized (see pg. 273 for a list). -The brain loves to learn; the key is to spark intrinsic motivation. -Avoid labeling students with terms such as "underachievers" as all learners are motivated from within (intrinsic) or from the outside (extrinsic). -De-motivators for learning are listed on pg. 275. -Sources of intrinsic motivation and ways to encourage intrinsically motivated learners are listed on pgs. 276-8.
The main points of interest for me from this chapter were the reasons why rewards don't work. I've always felt that 'lighting the spark' for learning is a better way to teach than to bribe students into doing some desired behavior that likely will not last once the reward is gone. The sources of intrinsic motivation listed in this chapter are great starting points for thinking about this topic; I found these tips to be very useful.
9 comments:
I decided to share information on Chapter 8 (Learning Environment)because this is an area of teaching that many times is not regarded as important or as necessary in the teaching process. Other times, teachers feel that they do not have the time to give so much thought to what goes on the walls. Other times, teachers simply do not know how much impact on learning your environment has. Yet other times, some teachers feel that the more things you have on your wall the more your students will get distracted.
My goal regarding this topic is to use this information to help me improve my teaching and to help students learn more effectively thru the use of the learning environment.
There are many great points in this chapter. Some of these ideas I have used in my classroom. Other ideas I need to incorporate because they will improve the performance and attitude of my students in positive ways.
I found many points of interest. One of such points is the impact of the classroom environment on students'behaviors and learning. A carefully planned environment can accomplish about 25% of your teaching. Simple classroom modifications can do that.
Another point of interest is that our brain needs stimulus, more change, and more movement in the classroom. The standard, rigid sit-still format is unproductive. Change your bulletin boards, seating arrangements, furniture, colors, etc. throught the school year.
The front of the room is best kept clean and simple. The sides of the room should have most of the instructional visual stimuli.
The position of the visuals can impact the student in varied ways. If you want to inspire good feelings, place things below students' eye level. When the eyes look down and to the right you are accesing the kinesthetic mode. When you put things at eye level, students will talk about a specific item on the wall. Yet, if you want students to just observe the information, put things above eye level which stimulates the visual mode. This is good when you want your students to recall information and to review it.
Room temperature and lighting also affect the way students learn. If possible, classrooms should be kept between 68 and 72 degrees F to feel comfortable for most students. Natural and indirect lighting is better than fluorescent; the front of the room should be well-lit.
Another point mentions the sound of learning. Since about 40% of your students are auditory learners, music can bring forth desirable mood changes.
One way to use music in your classroom is to play it at the beginning and closing, and to mark transitions or breaks. Depending on your students state, you can play lively or slower music.
The last AHA point has to do with greeting students at the door when they first come in the clasroom. It elicits a positive personal impression.
There where other interesting points in addition to the ones I mentioned here. This is a great chapter to read because of the importance of the learning environment in students'learning.
Chapter 4: Diversity and Differences
I chose this chapter to read because there are no two students alike. There is diversity in almost every school, but of course, some more than others. I found this chapter very interesting and informative to read. There were some things that I had already known, but much of the information was new to me.
One of the topics that I knew about already was about the difference between boys and girls when it comes to learning. I knew that girls read at an earlier age than boys. My son and daughter were both August babies. My husband and I sent our daughter to kindergarten right after her 5th birthday. We waited that extra year for our son. We are really glad that we did because they both did fine. We didn’t think our son was ready at 5 years old and that extra year really helped him out.
One of the AHA’s that I read about was the number of children on stimulant medication for ADD and ADHD. I heard there were a lot, but I did not realize that over one in every thirty is.
The chapter talked about diversity and differences among children. Some of the others that were mentioned were dyslexia, gifted and talented, and multi-culture diversity.
As I stated earlier, I found this chapter to be very informative and I will use the information to help me become a better teacher by trying to understand each individual student within my classroom.
Chapter 10 - Powerful Listening Skills
I chose this chapter because I believe it is an important skill to work on for adults and students. Jensen did an excellent job breaking down listening styles, ways to create a listening environment, non-verbal cues, and clarifying what is being said.
Attentive listening is something we practice all the time in my classroom. I always do many tribes activities with my students and listening without interrupting is something they all struggle with. There are excellent tips in this chapter such as Precision Listening and Listening With Empathy. In this chapter he also points out that before effective communication can take place you need to show students that they can trust you and feel safe. I had a unique situation with a student this past school year. She had a kidney disease and was set to have a kidney transplant at the end of June. You could really read in her body language and voice that she was very anxious about the surgery, and she would generally talk to me about it and not the other students. As the school year was ending her classmates noticed her anxiety, and became great empathetic listeners. She began to talk quite openly about her surgery. The other students were great and I know they were a comfort to her. (Her surgery went great and she is now recovering at home.)
The Aha's for me were the empathetic and precision listening tips. Positive listening skills are
important and something we always need to work on. I will also refer back to the examples of effective questioning to get clarification.
I decided to read about learning environment, as well. I feel that this is a weakness for me in my school because I have 3 different classrooms that I share with other teachers. One of the classrooms is quite messy and unorganized due to the other teacher and I can see that it affects my students. I learned from the chapter that a poorly designed environment distracts from the learning process. I also learned that I can do simple things such as adding more color to the room, playing soft music, posting affirmations, allowing students to choose seating, and having a communication board. My goal is to incorporate these things in all of my classrooms and I am going to speak with the one teacher and offer my help to keep the room looking tidy and maybe he will make an effort since it will truly benefit students.
I forgot to mention something and I can't figure out how to repost or add to my previous post, so I will add it in a new post. An aha to me in the chapter was the fact that forced-frozen student seating can impair learning and that allowing students to choose fresh, unconditional seats each time will help to leave old, fixed, and limiting patterns. I have always used a seating chart and could not imagine not having one! However, I am going to try it and hope that it works. I do see the point in giving choices in order to make the environment more welcoming and open.
One of the chapters that caught my interest was Chapter 12 on "Learning Activities and Energizers."
Physical activity boosts the mental activity. If we use learning that which involves more physical activity it is generally is more effective learning.
Engaging one's emotions can help activate the mid-brain area. Role-playing and learning games help all us to learn with our muscles as well as our body. Since our body is in the survival mode it helps us to relieve some stress by doing multi-sensory stimulation.
The AHA that I reflected on was that many discipline problems are a result of board, under-stimulated, and/or physically active students who need a change. It usually happens when there are numerous problems I tend to forget at that moment to get the kids engaged in an energizer or another activity.
My goal is to add more of the energizers into my classroom this school year. I picked up a magic coloring book and a glow thumb that I am eager to try with my students to encourage them.
This chapter is filled with various energizers to help boost or "wake up" the mind and body. There are many activities listed to use at various grade levels, and can be adapted as well to suite your students. Rock-paper- scissors game can easily be turned into a game of elephant (pretend by having a trunk), moose (Hands up by ears for antlers), or sleeping rabbit (pretend to be sleeping). Oh the fun you can have, and still energize the students! Check out the pages 171-180 for lot of activities to use in your classroom.
One of the chapters I chose was Mental Models of Success. I Teach Tech Ed and coach wrestling. I also wrestled in college on a scholorship. The most valuable part of wrestling at the college level was learning how to build mental toughness. The demands of completing coursework and competing at that level were very rigorous. So many of the concepts in this chapter brought me back to the lessons I learned as a competitor. I have since learned how to use the mental lessons I learned then to succeed in life. This is what I try to pass on to my students. What can you do now to give yourself the best chance to succeed in life. Even now when I coach high school athletes I am always mindful to use sports as a medium to convey life lesons. Too often it is the other way around. The sport becomes more important than life. Integraty, fair play, and hard work sometimes give way to cheating, braking rules, and lying in an attempt to win. The win is nice but it is not the ultimate goal. The ulitimate goal is to develop and hone skills that give you the best chance to succeed and achieve your goals. The win may simply be a way to measure but it is not the end resullt. It takes tremondous mental development to resist the pressure to win at all costs and to adopt the mind set that it is more important to develop the skills for success. I often use sports to convey this message but it can beconveyed universally accorss diciplines. When your sports career is over no one is going to care how many wins you had, your boss does not care if you won a state title, he cares if you learned to effectively deal with adverity, did you learn how to effectivly correct mistakes, do you know how to lead a team? Those are the types of things that will help you succeed in life and they all require a foundation of stong mental dicipline. The kind that comes from utilizing the mental models of success.
Chapter 15 Multiple Intelligences…The reason I chose the chapter on MI is because I feel this area would be something I could implement this fall in my classroom. I use some beginnings of MI right now but I just need to further develop those to create a true MI classroom. Teachers need to make decisions regarding how they present their content. With our current CMP curriculum there is more chance for discovery than in the previous text. This also leads to more of MI classroom.
My goals for this fall would be to set up more learning centers based on the 8 MI and connect them to the content in my math classroom. I would have to start out small by setting up an area or learning center where students could work on a few extensions with the unit. These extensions could be some logical puzzles or a vocabulary word find. Students could work independently or within a small group.
Another goal would be to use journaling more often during the review for math lessons. I still need to come up with a method for reading the 120 journals every other day. Peer teaching and peer sharing are things that have been started but could be developed further. This could be during review lessons as well. I would also like to set up more of an after school math program to get students helping students. Finally incorporating movement during a math fact game would also make remembering the facts a little easier. I like the idea of clapping with the beat and saying or chanting the correct multiple of 9.
The interesting thing I found out with this chapter is that I use many MI ideas in my classroom already. These just need to be tweaked a bit to get the full amount. I find that Jensen’s book will be very helpful in tweaking my MI lessons. Ultimately with using these MI ideas I will get the most out of each student possible.
I decided to share information on Chapter 20, "Motivation and Rewards," because this is a topic that I feel strongly about and often see handled in very different ways. My goals regarding this topic were to find out more about the author's research-supported point of view as well as to learn how to encourage students to become internally motivated instead of relying on external rewards.
The following is an outline of highlights from the chapter:
-Rewards create uncertainty in the learner's mind.
-Offering predictable or market-valued compensation or consquences (i.e. rewards) in fact bribe the learner.
-Rewards hinder creativity and create a need for more and more (and greater) rewards.
-In the long run, well-intended rewards do more damage than good for the "unmotivated under-achiever."
-When rewards stop, the desired behavior stops and a return to baseline performance occurs.
-Rewards *can* work when the request is for physical output, not intellectual.
-Alternatives to bribing students include: 1.) to make school meaningful, 2.) to make school relevant, and 3.) to make school fun; intrinsic rewards to learning can and should be emphasized (see pg. 273 for a list).
-The brain loves to learn; the key is to spark intrinsic motivation.
-Avoid labeling students with terms such as "underachievers" as all learners are motivated from within (intrinsic) or from the outside (extrinsic).
-De-motivators for learning are listed on pg. 275.
-Sources of intrinsic motivation and ways to encourage intrinsically motivated learners are listed on pgs. 276-8.
The main points of interest for me from this chapter were the reasons why rewards don't work. I've always felt that 'lighting the spark' for learning is a better way to teach than to bribe students into doing some desired behavior that likely will not last once the reward is gone. The sources of intrinsic motivation listed in this chapter are great starting points for thinking about this topic; I found these tips to be very useful.
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